'Godzilla' Is the Wrong Kind of Disaster

[Heads up: SPOILERS follow]

I had such high hopes for Godzilla. The monster that was born in the 1950s to embody the bomb—at the time, the greatest existential threat to civilization—showed up in 2013 in this stylish trailer, replete with Brian Cranston, good cinematography, and hints that it would once again become a mighty metaphor for the perils of human hubris. Director Gareth Edwards had even stated explicitly that he was aiming to make Godzilla truly terrifying again, by returning the beast to its roots and spiriting him away from the rubber-suit punchline he'd become.

Unfortnuately, the film more closely resembles any one of the installments in the seemingly interminable string of B-movie creature features that followed the original—it's more Godzilla vs. Rodan than Gojira. It's an aimless, meandering monster mash with plenty of toppled buildings and fleeing civilians but little actual pathos.

That's too bad. I'd speculated that the trailer's depictions of Hurricane Sandy-like floodwaters might indicate that Edwards was maneuvering Godzilla into a position to represent climate change—which, now that the Cold War is over, has of course become our era's biggest existential threat. Edwards had told io9 that while his film didn't specifically target climate change, it was "about the power of nature, and how we sometimes abuse that power." He added that "Godzilla is a symbol of nature coming back to put us in our place, to restore the balance or however you want to define it."

That sounded pretty fearsome—humans have, after all, so radically exploited our environment that our pollution is raising global temperatures and sea levels. The reptillian beast could very well have represented the forces unleashed by our reckless mining and burning of fossil fuels.

Alas, Godzilla, it is eventually revealed, has emerged after decades of dormancy mostly to beat up a pair of big beetles. His role in the plot is actually secondary to two also-giant angry insectoids that are determined to mate directly atop San Francisco. That's about the extent of the plot; these Massive Unknown Terrestrial Organisms (MUTOs) show up, wreak havoc, and Godzilla chases after them.

As an action film, this is a little dull because there's never much narrative here, or much at stake besides CGI cities filled with screaming, faceless people. What begins with an intriguing setup—in which Brian Cranston loses his wife to nuclear folly caused, we'll later find out, by one of the giant beetles—is jettisoned almost entirely. Nuclear engineer Joe Brody is apparently no Walter White, as he bites it early on. And we're never sure why the world is supposed to be collapsing at the hands of these monsters.

For a disaster or a giant creature flick to transcend facile B-movie trappings, they typically have to tap into real, three-dimensional fears we harbor about our society's decline. Godzilla doesn't. It's just monsters breaking stuff on every level. The film includes allusions to nuclear disaster, but Godzilla is never meant to symbolize the threat. One of the MUTOs is unleashed when a mining company drills too close to its cocoon, but that link isn't emphasized, either—the other one just breaks free and stomps through Las Vegas.

After mankind vanquishes Godzilla in the original film, the lead scientist delivers a mournful speech about the folly of pushing technology too far. In 2014, the analgous moment, which features Ken Watanabe gazing off into the distance and imparting wisdom to a military leader, is telling in its vapidity: "The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control, and not the other way around."

See, the military tries repeatedly to bomb the monsters into oblivion, but since they feed off of nuclear power, they just happily chomp the bombs. The military tries to get bigger bombs, but Watanabe's scientist objects with this piece of ancient wisdom: "Let them fight." Godzilla, he suggests, will combat the two bugs and restore "balance." Sometimes, you just have to let 300-foot monsters bash each other to bits, and if they destroy a major city or two in the process, so be it.

The moral message of the movie, as much as it can be said to have one, ends up being: If we beget a massive catastrophe, we should wait it out until another catastrophe steamrolls that one. Suffer through disaster; buildings will fall, but eventually Godzilla will come, set things right, and slink off again into the sea. That's eventually what happens, to the puzzlement of the viewer: this thing that had just torn down the Golden Gate bridge, killed hundreds of people, but now, after killing two other animals that were attempting to procreate, he is hailed as a hero.

Ultimately, problem with modern Godzilla is that he doesn't stand for anything—he stands over plenty, and on top of lots of things, but there's nothing of any significance behind those crusty CGI scales of his. There's no trace of meaningful threat, no looming nuclear danger, ecological disaster, or any other manmade catastrophe. As with most fantastic cinema concoctions these days, he's an entertainment engineering marvel, who lumbers capriciously onto and off the screen for our amusement. This Godzilla has no coherent story to tell about our fears, so we end up not fearing him at all.